Doctors followed one another like a flock of ravens, all of them impotent, all of them susceptible, jealous of one another, disputing over relationships, and even before death they did not forget their pride. These gentlemen have not changed so much since the times of Molière, but today they will kill you for more money; Mother enriched that guild, as well as that of drug manufacturers, received several hundreds of different injections and absorbed an incalculable number of pills, so many as to annihilate a whole herd of cattle. At the time of her death, medicine boxes formed the pyramid.
May these paintings be forgiven, I only portray the truth. I do not bear a grudge against doctors, they are poor men like their patients, who become insensitive out of obligation, even though I would have wished at times that their profession was only available to hopeful saints, and that the spectacle of our sufferings did not harden them to the point of increasing them. The strangest thing was that they were laughing, at the very moment when one would have wept gladly: at the bedside of the dying they represented not life, but the nothingness of the world, victim of their grimace,
they did not even know how to comfort the one they could not cure.
I said, and I stand by it, I did not like Mother's family, but between ourselves, I think she felt the same way, she kept her relatives at a distance more and more, and twenty-five years ago we lost track of them. When she was young, she had very few points of similarity with those people, but in her maturity none of that survived, something that pleased me and I congratulated her for a change that gave her a better appearance. I made her notice the vilely horrendous air of this or that, she readily admitted it.
She possessed the art of making happy those who lived with her as well as those who worked for her, a double virtue of the best born women, all those who approached her were happy to have known her, she never offended anyone, the rejected deserved it. The sense of order took on the dimension of harmony, her qualities were strengthened over time as her judgment was sharpened, as for old age, she had no reason to fear it, she was approaching it when it still seemed so distant and it was only thanks to a merciless evil that age was brought down on her.
I feel that I am becoming too personal and I stop, as my modesty is again being claimed. The world is full of very nice and very remarkable women, several million families are convinced of this and not everything is illusion in such views, complacency certainly works miracles, but objectivity begins where outsiders proves us right. I just believe in the virtues of Mother, since there are those who are interested in her person and seem to be moved by her absence; courtesy does not go so far and lies would be exhausted. She will live in my writings and this is the way to pay my debt.
Mother's dresses are of the best taste, and as I contemplate them I am overcome by a quite voluptuous melancholy; the world of women has its pleasant things and the sublime, which surpasses everything, does not replace them; accessories and trifles have a form of eloquence; their common denominator is happiness. I love the glory of the chosen ones but, I must confess, the dressing table of a beautiful woman -all proportion kept- complements it, I ignore delights of existence, but I esteem them, and I was unable to cultivate them, my life is dark and militant… It's just that I had a piece of wall to watch over.
I surprise myself inhaling Mother´s perfumes, they return it to me at once and you can already guess by what enchantment, it is a profound joy that by restoring a presence to me that contains a philosophy, I have recovered -like Marcel before me- the time, I have tasted the Sabbath and I refer the reader of my pages to those others in which I analyzed the work of Proust in the light of the Jewish mystics. Marcel was one of the architects of time, a true Assidonense. Many French people still need to understand him, for now they only enjoy him and in vain ask themselves: why does the charm operate?
Mother's closet is full of treasures, Father, in fact, doesn't discover them, he sees in them only excuses for tears, everything hurts him, the slightest memory hurts him, the last few months hide the years, the mask of death dims the lights of a hundred times longer life, of two fantasies he chose the wrong one, and confused misery with supreme truth, I dare to tell him that he was fooling himself? What do the dark weeks prove? They only prove themselves and do not testify against the past or against the dream that will follow them forever.
It was around 1960 when Mother became melancholic and that took on the most beautiful air in the world, that change whose cause I could not penetrate made it more endearing to my eyes, the shadows of death are the school of absolute coldness and eternal life would be the condiments of love. One loves the one who threatens tomorrow, and even more so the greater the threat, God does not love and is not an object of love, divine love is nonsense, it better, certainly, is not to love anyone and for that it is necessary to start by ourselves. He who makes a profession of hating himself breaks with sensitive attachments.
When we think our feelings, our feelings fade away, it is enough that the look of the Spirit hangs over them to reduce them to ashes in the act. Mother has died, either I hang myself or I forget her, I wanted to destroy myself, I felt that I had some books in my head, I decided to live as long as necessary and forget the annihilated one, my weekly agenda had no other purpose, it saved me the abyss from I was going to jump into. We must bury our dead or we must follow them, immolate ourselves in their graves or turn our backs on them without shedding a single tear...